Herder's conception of "das Volk"

by Georgiana Rose Simpson

The elevation of human nature, as found in the individual, to something which has a universal value, to something higher and nobler than the interests of self alone was one of the prominent tenets of Shaftesbury’s philosophy. This implied a moral and social system composed of parts nicely adjusted in each single entity, which in turn was a component part of a larger whole; the parts of this greater system were likewise in constant proportion to one another, and so finely and fitly adjusted that any disarrangement could not fail to effect the harmonious blending and the unity of the entire design. Out of this, it follows that man can come to his truest and most natural development in community life only.

And thus, if there be found in any creature a more than ordinary self-concernment or regard to private good, which is inconsistent with the interest of the species or public, this must in every respect be esteemed an ill and vicious affection. And this is what we commonly call selfishness, and disapprove so much, in whatever creature we happen to discover it.—Inquiry, Book I.

When we reflect on any ordinary frame or constitution either of art or nature, and consider how hard it is to give the least account of a particular part without a competent knowledge of the whole, we need not wonder to find ourselves at a loss in many things relating to the constitution and frame of nature herself.—Inquiry, Book I.

To love the public, to study universal good, and to promote the interest of the whole world, as far as lies within our power, is surely the height of goodness, and makes that temper which we call divine.—Letter Concerning Enthusiasm, section 4.

The harmonious man is to be the product of a natural unfolding of innate human nature. The potentialities within are to be allowed to develop unwarped and unimpeded and to express themselves completely and symmetrically. There must be no subordination of personality or individuality to artificial standards, for nature is the sovereign. If no powers, inclinations, or impulses are thwarted in their trend and activity, they will, in all their manifold variety, flower into the perfectly beautiful and therefore the perfectly good.

Now the variety of nature is such as to distinguish everything she forms by a peculiar, original character, which, if strictly observed, will make the subject appear unlike to anything extant in the world besides.

For all beauty is truth. True features make the beauty of a face, and true proportions the beauty of architecture—Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humor, Part IV.

That faculty by which the good and the beautiful are to be recognized and approved is indeed little different if different at all from an emotion. The principle of feeling really becomes the criterion of right and wrong. It is the principle of feeling which forms the essence of Shaftesbury’s Moral Sense. He admits that this sense may be improved by cultivation, but its essential part is innate. “Sense of right and wrong” is as natural to us as natural affection itself, and a first principle in our constitution.

The two ideas which we are considering here as a part of Shaftesbury’s philosophy are the development of the individual and his harmonious relation to the whole of mankind.